


Luck of the Whatever

by Macremae



Category: EOS 10, EOS 10 podcast
Genre: Gen, I got this idea from Tumblr, and it's the longest one chapter I've ever written, space lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:57:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you reckon there’s one guy who’s managed to be there for every major public event - like in the waiting room of the clinic, at the cafeteria during Levi’s coup d’état, walking through the promenade when Dr Urvidian was hanging off the balcony - and is just thinking: what the fuck kind of space station is this?" Why yes, yes there was. This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luck of the Whatever

**Author's Note:**

> Idea taken from this post: http://icestar663.tumblr.com/post/114498474386/heir-to-the-diamond-throne-justinmclachlan

Five years of living on a station filled with the weirdest beings imaginable tends to give you some perspective on things. Mella doesn't exactly welcome this perspective; she prefers machines to people anyway, but it can be useful at times.

For instance, she notices while waiting for her yearly exam, the guy with pink hair who's talking to Dr. Johns obviously has no idea what he's doing.

Well, that's a bit unfair. He probably is very in control of his life, but everything about his posture and face say "What is going on here?". The two talk for a few moments, then Johns comes from behind the entry desk and leads the still confused looking man down a hall.

He's working as a doctor? Mella would pay good money to be a fly on the wall of the room she thinks they're headed for.

 

\--

The next morning, she's awoken by her comms bracelet beeping. Phae has obviously been up for a while from the sound of his voice, and he's going on about something in the promenade. It's probably just a typical interspecies row, but she's already awake now, so she gets dressed and heads down.

There's a huge crowd of people there, all talking and looking up. Mella finds Phae pretty quickly (it's hard to miss a six feet tall anthropomorphic bug) and follows his gaze up to one of the balconies.

"Is that-?", she asks, but it's unneeded. The crowd wouldn't be this big if it weren't.

"Oh god, how drunk do you think he is."

"Actually," Phae says, turning to her, "Olivia told me he's sober."

He might have well told her that it was raining alarm clocks.

"How." is Mella's only response.

"Apparently the Alliance sent someone to help. Guess he's not taking well to going cold turkey."

"No shit." says Mella, and they watch as the pink haired guy she saw yesterday does something up there that gets Dr. Urvidian off the balcony.

\--

One of the station's processors is being testy, so she spends a good portion of the day trying to get the damn thing past its "smoking cloud of problems" phase. By the time it's finally at optimal again, Mella's missed lunch, and a good bit of dinner.

She sighs, orders a salad, and watches people in the food court. Word is there's going to be a waffle bar up soon.

 

\--

Several nights later, she can't sleep, so she decides to wander around the station until she feels tired. Five minutes into her little walkabout, she regrets it.

There's a group of people arguing in the middle of the hallway; those doctors that are always doing weird stuff around the station no other practitioner does. 

Pink haired guy (who is apparently named Dr. Dalias) is covering his crotch for some reason and looks pretty ticked off. Johns looks like she's trying not to burst out laughing, and it's obvious Urvidian doesn't want to be there at all.

He says something and Dalias goes very pale for a few seconds, before bringing the conversation's volume up a few notches.

Mella catches the words "penis" and "needle" and decides she might want to try reading a book instead.

\--

"Hey, you know that sector that had the really bad plague going on?" Phae says over breakfast.

"Not particularly, but go on."

"Well apparently a fleet of cargo ships just waltzed right in with a cure! No one knows where they came from, but I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."

 _Huh_ , Mella thinks, _I guess those doctors were doing something productive after all_.

\--

"There's a what docked?!"

"A plague ship Olivia, there's a plague ship docked here. I've been called in to try and fix its life support systems, so I'd appreciate if you'd get with the program!"

Mella's making her way to the docking bay as fast as one can in flats, and she's really not looking forward to having her day interrupted by this.

She sees Dr. Dalias heading in the same direction, and he probably knows something about this, so she stops him.

"Hey, do you know what's going on with the ship? The debriefing just said that there was no current cure for the virus."

"That would be because flu vaccines stopped being produced centuries ago." he replies, looking not at all happy with this information.

"What?" Mella asks, taken aback. "There's an influenza epidemic on this thing?"

"Yeah, the whole ship's full of extremists who think that vaccines will give them autism or something."

"Oh God, we're dealing with those types."

She wishes him luck before slipping on a hazard suit and hurrying down to the ship's core to try and make sense of it.

It's no use though. The technology is practically ancient, and there's nothing she can do. Mella gets out of there as quickly as possible, and is personally not surprised when some whack job blows the damned thing up.

Good riddance.

\--

"I hate her. Truly and totally, I will not make it a secret."

"You're doing a pretty good job of that now" says Phae, rolling his eyes. "Look, I know Ariba's not the nicest person in the world, but she just needs a reality check."

"It's not just that! She acts all high and mighty just because she went to some fancy engineering college. I'm teaching her, and I went to Golferd! It's that she acts so fucking condescending! 'Oh Mella dah-ling, you're so quaint with your crude methods. It's ever so entertaining.' I'd love to show her something crude!"

Mella's fuming at this point, and she knows she's acting like a child, but this is a serious matter.

"She'll wear herself out." Phae says, "Trust me, it'll be fine."

"I hope so," Mella replies, "for her sake."

\--

She's updating the Interface when her comms bracelet beeps with a signal from Olivia.

"Kinda busy, what's going horribly wrong this time?"

"You didn't hear?" Olivia asks incredulously.

"I reiterate, kinda busy."

"Dr. Urvidian's back! He and Dalias fixed up that deposed prince who's been in the kitchens." 

"Wait, wasn't he dead for a bit?" 

"They revived him, he got poisoned so they gave him the flu as a cure."

Mella stops to consider this for a moment.

"There are several things wrong with what you just said."

She can practically hear Olivia shrug.

"Look, I know it sounds crazy, but they did! Isn't that amazing?"

"Yes, fascinating." Mella says, and cuts the link.

\--

Mella doesn’t know why a bunch of people are running around, fighting over a plant, but she would prefer not to. 

\--

Of all the days to get called for jury duty, it has to be for a terrorist trial.

Mella's waiting around outside the courtroom, watching people come and go for the trial. She spots Admiral Dalias (holy shit he's so cool), and a couple people she's seen around the station.

The trial barely gets a chance to get going though, before the archives explodes. Of course it does.

Several people are killed in the blast, including Admiral Dalias, and Akmazian is blamed. Personally, Mella has some doubts about his guilt. There must have been a reason someone would testify for him.

\--

“Ah, there you are Mella.”, says Ariba. “I need a favor.”

“No.”

Ariba makes a face. “I didn’t even tell you what it is yet!”

“I know,” she replies, “and I don’t care. If you haven’t noticed yet, which wouldn’t surprise me, I hate you.”

“Please? I’ll buy you lunch.”

“...Ugh, fine. But if I end up covered in milk again, there will be consequences.”

Why the bitch needs radiation readings from Cargo Bay 6 is beyond Mella, but she goes anyway.

There isn’t much to see. The levels are a tad higher than normal, but that’s not worth panicking about yet. She’ll let the Interface know regardless.

As the records the data, the faint sounds of arguing drift over from Bay 7. It’s abandoned, so there shouldn’t be noise period, but Mella’s ears are not the type to lie.

She slides open the adjoining door a crack, and peeks through. There are three figures talking, but she can’t make out any details in the darkness. Patches of conversation float through; they seem to be talking about a pet.

It seems innocent enough, so she closes the door and heads back up to the main area.

\--

Mella doesn’t know what the fuck is happening on the floor above her, but she’s spent enough time around here to not question things like this.

Still looks painful though.

\--

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Ariba asks her. “I know the shields are up, but the storm is supposed to be pretty rough.”

Mella rolls her eyes. “I’ll be fine. There probably won’t be any mechanical problems, they’re just keeping me on station as a precaution.”

Ariba still looks unsure, but she boards the bunker ship anyway.

With that said and done, Mella has a poker game to attend. Those bitches are gonna get schooled.

That never comes to pass however, as the Interface has decided it’s high time to take some storm damage. Fantastic.

She tries to enter the core, but it’s blocked off by some kind of shield. The rescue crews arrive, and she heads away from where she’s not needed.

The Interface sounds unusually testy that night though. Odd.

\--

“Hey, Phae?” she asks at breakfast.

He nods in acknowledgement, so she continues. 

“Have you ever thought you knew exactly how you felt about someone, but then realized that it’s become the opposite?”

Phae raises an eyebrow. “Is this about Ariba?”

Mella chokes on her oatmeal. “W-what? I- no, of course not! Why would you- that’s- nothing. It has nothing to do with her.”

He looks unconvinced. so she bites her lip and looks away.

“Really? Because these days you can barely form a coherent sentence about her. Case in point.”

Mella doesn’t respond. 

Phae shrugs. “You could always try flowers. That’s nice.”

“Is there a bouquet mixture that means, ‘I sort of hate you, but please fuck me senseless?’”

“I don’t know, and I don’t think I ever want to.”

She does some research, and decides on orange lilies, citronella, and violets. It’s unorthodox, but gets the point across. 

The horticulture shop smells like her mom’s bedroom, the scent she imagines sunlight would have. The owner is already speaking to two others, so she wanders around the arrangements until the very embarrassed looking woman is back behind the desk.

She seems to have a good idea of Mella’s intentions with the flowers, and mutters something about Reagan being very happy about this. 

Mella leaves with a headache, and a case of stomach butterflies.

\--

How hard can confessing one’s love be?

Apparently very.

There are several moments the next day when it would have been perfectly tactful to pull out the flowers from Mella’s desk drawer, but obviously they aren’t the right one. It’ll come.

Probably.

\--

The explosion should have been a wake up call. 

Ariba was way too close to the sight for Mella’s liking, and she’s beginning to think that there never will be a “right moment”.

It’s still frightening though. They’ve cultivated a sort of friendship, and rejection would make it extremely awkward. 

Mella can’t keep putting it off though. She’ll tell her tomorrow.

\--

“There’s a what on that ship?!”

“An artifact Mella, don’t be so surprised. The Alliance always picks up odd little things, and Father sent me to take a few notes on it for his company.”

“Okay, but, can’t those things do… weird stuff to your mind?”

“That’s just a myth.” Ariba snorts. “I’ll be perfectly fine.”

\--

Ariba is not perfectly fine.

After six comms calls get sent to voicemail, Mella makes up an excuse of a maintenance check and marches onto the ship herself. She finds Ariba standing stock-still in an empty hallway, eyes glowing white.

“For Christ’s sake.”, says Mella, and smacks her.

There is no change, so she tries a different tactic.

“Ariba, if you don’t snap out of it right now, I will do things, and you won’t like them.”

Again, no response. 

She can hear the sound of footsteps, and there aren’t really any logical options presenting themselves, so Mella does the first thing that pops into her head. She kisses her.

A few moments pass, and suddenly she feels Ariba returning the gesture, pressing against Mella eagerly. 

They pull apart just in time to see a group of very disoriented guards looking around. Ariba doesn’t ask questions, but quietly exits the ship alongside Mella.

\--

A while later, after several rounds of questioning, they sit in Mella’s quarters awkwardly. 

“So…” Ariba begins. “We kissed.”

“We did.” Mella replies. “Apparently it was the destruction of the artifact that broke the thrall though.”

“Neat.”

They’re silent for a few seconds, before Ariba says, “Shall we accept that this means we’re both begrudgingly attracted to each other and make out?”

“Best idea you’ve ever had.”

There’s lot of excellent kissing, and some things that aren’t kissing, and they both agree that they should have done this much sooner.

“We live on the most fucked up station in the universe.” Mella says after round five.

“We do.” Ariba replies.


End file.
